Please do not reproduce this article either all or in part without the expressed written permission of the author who can be reached via the “Contact” section in the header menu. You may link to the article if you wish, all that we ask is that you give credit to the respective author…”Christmachine” wherever you post a link. Thank you.

This is an educational website only…providing knowledge to those seeking information and artistic criticism in their journey for a more thorough understanding of contemporary media technology and guerrilla journalism.

To help others to navigate the tedious, and sometimes difficult to understand world of Analog to Digital / Digital to Digital Recordings and Transfers or “Rips”.

It’s all about the “Art Of Mastering” and “Source Material”. As you know the sound is only as good as it’s source, thus “Garbage in Garbage Out”.

As of today we have a large “Reference Quality Recordings” catalog (Flat Analog Transfers to Digital) sourced from Vinyl Rips from around the world. Our goal is to pressure the Rec*ording industry to move toward creating a “Reference Quality Digital Recordings Catalog” (Direct Flat Transfers from Original Analog Master Tapes to Digital). There are a few movements that are positively affecting change toward this goal, but the quality of Hi-Res Digital transfers is still extremely selective and spotty.

What is considered the “Best” of any recording is subjective…for example someone may love an official Hi-Res Digital Recording and that is fine, they might find the clarity and detail from such a recording is “The Best they have ever heard”. Whereas another trained ear who has heard many available recordings in different resolutions and formats of the recording in question might find it sterile, clinical, cold and lacking in many ways, as well as the sound being “different” from what the artists in the studio originally intended for the listener to hear. Re-masters and Re-mixes “usually” are not a good thing as people have been led to believe.

It should be stressed that every recording must be taken and analyzed on it’s own merit. Each release must be scrutinized on it’s own, without any bias that has been realized from any other recording. This sounds simple and obvious, but in critical listening, each individual album must be approached in this manner.

Lineage / Provenance of a recording should be the industry standard and it is not. Why are they hiding this information, we think it to be a combination of lack of care as well as the desire to keep the purchasing public in the dark so that they can continue to resell, over and over “Improved Quality Recordings”. This, not providing Lineage / Provenance of a recording is unacceptable.

The main goal of this site over all others is to provide content from all genres of music with no prejudice toward another. Good music is good music, and opening peoples minds to new sounds is extremely relevant here. This obviously does not mean “forced to listen”…this site will cover music you will like and not like. If you do not like something don’t listen and move on to something you do like. It’s sad that some people just give up if they are into Electronic Music and I post something that is Pop or Metal. I don’t mean to pick on Electronic music it is an example, Metal Heads or any other genres fans can give up if I post Jazz or Leftfield. Live a little!

Thanks for reading…you may want to check the “About” page on occasion, as I have said it is constantly evolving.

Again thank you for all your support…let’s enjoy the music!

Cheers and Bless Bless!

CM ☕

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Please do not reproduce this article either all or in part without the expressed written permission of the author who can be reached via the “Contact” section in the header menu. You may link to the article if you wish, all that we ask is that you give credit to the respective author…”Christmachine” wherever you post a link. Thank you.

The Beatles – Die Beatles (1964) (Original German Hör zu Pressing) Ans2TheMstr Vinyl Rip > Transferred to 24Bit/96kHz Lossless Flac [HI-RES]\
Comment From BZ: It is much heralded amongst Beatles [Collectors] people[sic] for being a version of that first LP that has not been subjected to any processing or equalization. In effect, it is advertised as the “truest” and “purest” vinyl represntation of the initial 14 Beatle songs ever offered in long play form. It has been sourced from a beautiful copy of
the original LP. [Ed Note: Different copy…same quality and pressing]http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=244569

The Beatles – Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999) Vinyl Rip > transferred to 24Bit/96kHz [Hi-Rez] Remixed & Re-Mastered & This is the Black Vinyl version not the Yellow Vinyl…Yellow is noisy and this black is quiet. Also this pressing is very “Clinical” Sounding but it may have the best Sounding Sgt. Peppers version anywhere IMO. I noticed there was so much more detail to this track and after a spectral analysis there was a lot more “cool” data to the file and I checked it against every version of Sgt. Peppers I have and I was right. Vinyl purists tend to detest this version because it does not contain the Original
Mixes.\

There are High Hopes That Pono Music Store Versions in the future (I doubt they’ll get anymore than the Digital 24Bits already released and they don’t make it on to this list) or The coming Mono Vinyl Box Set! (Don’t Hold your breath it took a few decades to get the 2009 digital remasters…the Mono’s were the best of the bunch and that is not saying much.) Sozzz 🙁

I hope this gives you some reference information. I will be updating it over time as the music continues to evolve. Thank you all for you questions, comments, and words of wisdom.

So there you have it…thanks for reading and your massive support.

Bless Bless!

CM ☕

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Please do not reproduce this article either all or in part without the expressed written permission of the author who can be reached via the “Contact” section in the header menu. You may link to the article if you wish, all that we ask is that you give credit to the respective author…”Christmachine” wherever you post a link. Thank you.

Please do not reproduce this article either all or in part without the expressed written permission of the author who can be reached via the “Contact” section in the header menu. You may link to the article if you wish, all that we ask is that you give credit to the respective author…”Christmachine” wherever you post a link. Thank you.

I’ve had this rig for more than a year now and I have not even had to use a “hard reset” even once…not one hiccup, just drag and drop files (Hi-rez or 16Bit/44.1kHz) on to the SD cards either directly via USB to player or put the Sandisk SDXC cards into the included adapter for computer card readers and dump many GB of data very quickly. For a few months I even used manipulated code firmware for the AK100, which was hacked by this kind developer from Russia on one of the forums because it added a gapless feature, better GUI (General User Interface), and more volume via the internal amp (it even sounded clearer)…this guy did it months sooner than Astel & Kern.

Now the official AK100 firmware has all of these features. Again another glaring example where the “underground” / “open source” movement forces a large company to get there act together and put out the options for the player that they want. That is not a dig at Astel and Kern as it sounds, I think they were releasing updates slowly to make sure there were not major problems on a large scale with their code. Astel & Kern is a great DAP maker, expensive but great. With all that said I would not advise anyone to instal unofficial firmware if they do not know what they are doing because you could brick your unit. This actually happened to some AK100 users on Head-fi and they could have had their warranties voided by Astel and Kern but A & K were nice enough to fix the units for free…now that’s customer service.

The Famous Wolfson WM8740 DAC Chip.

One last thing these and other DAP units are known to not be noobie user friendly in the sense that you have to have a little technical know how to get everything up and running (for ex. different formatting of the memory cards and “Hard and Soft Resets”) and if you hit a snag go social to fix a hangup. This is what the “Pono Ecosystem” is trying to eliminate a more seamless user experience and a tight GUI. Further if your a coming from the Apple Ecosystem these units are not as playlist friendly as the Ipod / Iphone / android/ Windows and Itunes and this is a deal-breaker for many…just like “gapless” is essential to me if you listen to albums like Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon” or any album with no breaks between songs. Some of the other players that one can consider in this category that work well but all have their ups and downs are models like the X3/X5 from Fiio, the Ibasso DX series, and the HiFiMan HM-901. Finally be aware that if you have power hungry or high impedance “cans” you may need to strap a small headphone amp to your portable player in order to fully power the headphones correctly. Happy listening!

Respect!

CM ☕

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Please do not reproduce this article either all or in part without the expressed written permission of the author who can be reached via the “Contact” section in the header menu. You may link to the article if you wish, all that we ask is that you give credit to the respective author…”Christmachine” wherever you post a link. Thank you.